ethnicity and eduaction Flashcards
what is ethnicity?
considered to be shared characteristics such as culture, language, nationality, religion, and traditions, which contribute to a person or group’s identity
ethnicity and education facts
- Afro-Caribbean girls tend to do better than working class white pupils at GCSE level.
- While some Pakistani and Bangladeshi children do relatively badly in school, recent research shows these pupils are catching up.
- In the 1990s Black w/c boys were the lowest achieving ethnic and social group, it is now white w/c boys.
- The length of time that Asian-immigrant groups have lived in Britain impacts on educational attainment. More recent arrival has a negative effect on performance.
- Gypsy / Roma children underperform, especially boys.
ethnicity - external factors
Family Structure
Family attitudes towards education
English as an Additional Language (EAL)
Cultural Capital or Cultural Deprivation
Material Deprivation
Racism in Wider Society
ethnicity - internal factors
Labelling
Racism
Pupil Subcultures
Ethnocentric curriculum
Selection, Sets Streaming and segregation
driver and ballard
Argue that Asian family culture brings educational benefits, with parents having a positive attitude towards education with higher aspirations for career options.
family attitudes
driver
Surveyed school leavers at 5 inner city schools and found that Afro-Caribbean females did better than white children, because the matrifocal family tradition of Jamaica was passed to them through strong female role models.
family struture
modood
Indian & Asian students have positive cultural capital which results in them getting good jobs.
family attitudes
what did the swann report find?
- asian families are close knit, which provides support for homework and a refuge from racism - this explains the relative high achievement for their children
- however, black families lack this support from extended families, and so underachieve - and respond more negatively to racism
family structures
tizzard
ao3 for swann report
- studied primary schools, met with Black families, found the under supportive Black family is a myth
- There is a ‘myth of under-achievement’ for black women. The girls in her sample did better in exams than black boys and white pupils in the school.
- Argues the educational achievements of black women are underestimated.
- Tizzard challenges the labelling theory of educational under-achievement. Although racism exists, she denies this has an impact on self-esteem of the black girls.
- Black families are just as supportive.
strand
- Indian & Asian students do well in education.
- Indian and Chinese families have higher levels of Parental control and expectations
- He also argues that Afro-Caribbean students suffer from material deprivation
DfES
found that children who had English as their second language were more likely to underachieve
teachers may label someone as poor at eng. bc of dialect and accent.
Although Driver and Ballard found that by age 16 Asian children whose first language was not English were as good at English as white children.
chua
Formed the expression ‘tiger parenting’, that is sometimes used to describe the very high parental expectation some Chinese Parents hold for their children. These parents have high aspirations for their children
murray
education and ethnicity - family structure
African Caribbean communities have a relatively high single parent rate. Murray believes this contributes to underachievement
critique - Davis and Moore (functionalists) said as we know live in a meritocratic society, the education system becomes the best mechanism for selecting the right people for the right jobs – role allocation.
school exclusion rates
exclusion rates five times higher for black carribean boys
institutional racism
describes societal patterns that impose oppressive or otherwise negative conditions on identifiable groups on the basis of race or ethnicity. Oppression may come from the government, schools or the court.
connoly
Internal Factors: teacher racism
- Studied five and six year olds in a multi-ethnic inner-city primary school.
- Teachers had a lack of sensitivity towards aspects of culture.
- Teachers pay less attention to Asian girls
- Asian girls assumed to be meek / shy/ not allowed to go to uni
- Pupils treated differently based on ethnicity. Black boys punished more and Asian boys seen as immature rather than threatening
swann report
internal factors - racism
schools can be institutionally racist
coard
- He claimed that teachers expected black children to fail, and this produced a self-fulfilling prophecy in which they lived ‘up’ to the expectations once they had been labelled.
- Black children were frequently placed in lower streams and bands, and in schools for the less able, but they also themselves expected to fail and, as a result, they did.
- According to Coard, the content of the education children received tended to ignore black people.
however, this ignores how Indian and Chinese pupils still succeed
example of ethnocentric curriculum
New research shows less than one percent of authors studied at GCSE English Literature level in England are from an ethnic minority background.
gillborn
Internal Factors: teacher racism and labelling
- found that Afro-Caribbean boys were more likely to be given detention than other pupils. Teachers misinterpreted dress and manner of Afro-Caribbean pupils as presenting a challenge to authority. (He calls this “the myth of the Black challenge”)
- Thus, in turn these pupils responded in accordance with their labels as being unruly and difficult to control.
sewell
Internal Factors: teacher racism and labelling
suggested that, due to their socialisation into negative stereotypes, some teachers were actually ‘fearful’ of black pupils.
Hall
Internal Factors: teacher racism and labelling
- Low self-esteem in black pupils is caused by racism which creates hostility towards education. African Caribbean students therefore leave school and get low paid jobs.’
- Also said African Caribbean boys create a culture of resistance
Wanless report (2006)
African-Caribbean students are most likely to be excluded
AO3 Gillborn and Mirza
Class has over FIVE times the effect on educational attainment as gender, and ethnicity has TWICE the effect.
